Imagine being in a room where all the sounds a human can hear are
played over a speaker. Voices, thunder, keystrokes, music, water boiling,
cell phones ringing... all at once. The resulting conflagration of sound
would result, in theory, in white noise.
White noise contains all frequencies and is often used
to mask other sounds. If you are in a motel and noise from the room next to
you can be heard in your room, you might turn on a fan to drown out the
voices. A sound of a fan produces an approximation of white noise. But
why does white noise drown out noise?
Here is popular way to imagine the effects of white
noise and sleep. If you listen to two people who are talking at the same
time your brain can normally pick out one of the two voices and actually hear
and understand it. If three people are talking simultaneously your brain can
probably still pick out one of the voices. However If 500 people are speaking
at once there is no way that your big brain can pick out one single voice. It
turns out that 500 people speaking simultaneously sounds a whole lot like
white noise. So when you turn on a fan to create white noise you are
essentially creating a source of 500 voices. The voices next door make it 501
voices and your brain can not focus on one single voice anymore. This is the
magic of the murmur ( i.e. Murmur in the Symphony ...and many
others).
This works for Tinnitus sufferers as well. That ringing
sound in our ears now must compete with a much more saturating environmental
noise for your brain's awareness. Some nature sounds contain natural white
noise. Rain, waves, and other natural sources feel much more pleasant to
listen to then this:
5 seconds of white noise
White noise can and will help you fall
asleep. What we do is add another dimension to the sounds. We strive to
emulate an actual environment. Used in conjunction with your own ability to
visualize, the sleep inducing effect can be dramatic.
